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A Modern Utopia Chapter 4 - The Voice of Nature · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter four of A Modern Utopia. This is a LibriVox recording.
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Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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Speaker 1: by Elena A Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells, Chapter
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Speaker 1: the fourth, the Voice of Nature, Section one. Presently we
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Speaker 1: recognize the fellow of the earthly Devil's Bridge, still intact
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Speaker 1: as a footway spanning the gorge, and old memories turn
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Speaker 1: us off the road, down the steep ruin of an
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Speaker 1: ancient mule track towards it. It is our first reminder
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Speaker 1: that Utopia too must have a history. We cross it
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Speaker 1: and find the rouse. For all that it is already
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Speaker 1: lit and warmed and ventilated and cleaned several thousands of
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Speaker 1: houses in the dale above, and for all that it
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Speaker 1: drives those easy trams in the gallery overhead, is yet
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Speaker 1: capable of as fine a cascade as ever it flung
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Speaker 1: on earth. So we come to a rocky path, wild
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Speaker 1: as one could wish, and descend discoursing how good and
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Speaker 1: fair and ordered world may be, but with a certain
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Speaker 1: unformulated qualification in our minds about those thumb marks we
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Speaker 1: have left behind. Do you recall the Zermatt Valley, says
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Speaker 1: my friend, and how on earth it reeks and stinks
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Speaker 1: with smoke? People make that an argument for obstructing change
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Speaker 1: instead of helping it forward, And here perforce an episode intrudes.
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Speaker 1: We are invaded by a talkative person. He overtakes us
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Speaker 1: and begins talking forthwith in a fluty but not unamiable tenor.
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Speaker 1: He is a great talker, this man, and a fairly
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Speaker 1: respectable gesticulator. And to him it is we make our
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Speaker 1: first ineffectual tentatives at explaining who indeed we are, but
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Speaker 1: his flow of talk washes that all away again. He
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Speaker 1: has a face of that rubicund knobby type I have
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Speaker 1: heard an indignant mineralogist speak of as Betroydal, and about
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Speaker 1: it waves a quantity of disorderly blonde hair. He is
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Speaker 1: dressed in leather doublet and knee breeches, and he wears
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Speaker 1: over these a streaming woolen cloak of faded crimson that
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Speaker 1: give him a fine traumatic outline. As he comes down
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Speaker 1: towards us over the rocks. His feet, which are large
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Speaker 1: and handsome but bright pink with the keen morning air,
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Speaker 1: are bare except for sandals of leather. It was the
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Speaker 1: only time that we saw any one in Utopia with
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Speaker 1: bare feet. He salutes us with a scroll like waving
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Speaker 1: of his stick and falls in with our slower paces climbers,
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Speaker 1: I presume, he says, and you scorn these trams of theirs.
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Speaker 1: I like you so do. I why man should consent
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Speaker 1: to be dealt with as a bale of goods holding
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Speaker 1: an indistinctive ticket when God gave him legs? And a
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Speaker 1: face passes my understanding. As he speaks, his staff indicates
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Speaker 1: the great mechanical road that runs across the gorge and
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Speaker 1: high overhead through a gallery in the rock, follows it
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Speaker 1: along until it turns the corner, picks it up as
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Speaker 1: viaduct far below, traces it until it plunges into an
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Speaker 1: arcade through a jutting crag, and there dismisses it with
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Speaker 1: a spiral whirl. No, he says, he seems sent by providence.
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Speaker 1: For just now we had been discussing how we should
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Speaker 1: broach our remarkable situation to these Utopians before our money
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Speaker 1: is spent. Our eyes meet, and I gather from the
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Speaker 1: botanists that I am to open our case. I do
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Speaker 1: my best. You came from the other side of space,
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Speaker 1: says the man in the crimson cloak, interrupting me precisely.
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Speaker 1: I like that. It's exactly my note, so do I.
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Speaker 1: And you find this world's strange exactly my case. We
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Speaker 1: are brothers. We shall be in sympathy. I'm amazed, I
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Speaker 1: have been amazed as long as I can remember, and
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Speaker 1: I shall die most certainly in a state of incredulous
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Speaker 1: amazement at this remarkable world. Eh, you found yourselves suddenly
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Speaker 1: upon a mountain top. Fortunate men, he chuckled. For my part,
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Speaker 1: I found myself in the still stranger position of infant
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Speaker 1: to two parents of the most intractable dispositions. The fact remains,
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Speaker 1: I protest a position I can assure you, demanding tact
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Speaker 1: of an altogether superhuman quality. We desist for a space
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Speaker 1: from the attempt to explain our remark arkable selves, and
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Speaker 1: for the rest of the time, this picturesque and exceptional
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Speaker 1: utopian takes the talk entirely under his control. Section two.
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Speaker 1: An agreeable person, though little distracting, he was, and he talked.
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Speaker 1: We recall of many things he impressed us. We found afterwards,
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Speaker 1: as opposer beyond question, a conscious ishmaelite in the world
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Speaker 1: of wit and in some subtly inexplicable way as a
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Speaker 1: most consummate ass. He talked first of the excellent and
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Speaker 1: commodious trams that came from over the passes and ran
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Speaker 1: down the long valley towards Middle Switzerland, and of all
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Speaker 1: the growth of pleasant homes and chalets amidst the heights
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Speaker 1: that made the opening gorge so different from its earthly parallel.
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Speaker 1: With a fine disrespect, but they are beautiful, I protested.
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Speaker 1: They are graciously proportioned, They are placed in well chosen positions.
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Speaker 1: They give no offense to the eye. What do we
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Speaker 1: know of the beauty they replace? They are mere rash?
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Speaker 1: Why should we men play the part of bacteria upon
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Speaker 1: the face of our mother? All life is like that,
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Speaker 1: not natural life, not the plants and the gentle creatures
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Speaker 1: that lived their wild shy lives in forest and jungle.
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Speaker 1: That is a part of her, that is the natural
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Speaker 1: bloom of her complexion. But these houses and tramways and
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Speaker 1: things all made from ore and stuff torn from her veins.
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Speaker 1: You can't better my image of the rash. It's a
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Speaker 1: morbid breaking out. I'd give it all for one. What
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Speaker 1: is it? Free and natural? Shammy, you live at times
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Speaker 1: in a house, I asked. He ignored my question. For
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Speaker 1: him untroubled nature was the best, he said, and with
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Speaker 1: a glance at his feet, the most beautiful. He professed
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Speaker 1: himself a Nazarite, and shook back his Teutonic poet's shock
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Speaker 1: of hair. So he came to himself, and for the
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Speaker 1: rest of our walk he kept to himself as the
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Speaker 1: thread of his discourse, and went over himself from top
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Speaker 1: to toe, and strung thereon all topics under the sun.
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Speaker 1: By way of illustrating his splendors, but especially his foil
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Speaker 1: was the relative folly, the unnaturalness and want of logic
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Speaker 1: in his yellow men. He held strong views about the
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Speaker 1: extreme simplicity of everything, only that men, in their muddle headedness,
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Speaker 1: had confounded it all. Hence, for example, these trams, they're
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Speaker 1: always running up and down, as though they were looking
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Speaker 1: for the lost simplicity of nature. We dropped it here.
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Speaker 1: He earned a living. We gathered some considerable way above
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Speaker 1: the minimum wage, which threw a chance light on the
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Speaker 1: labor problem by perforating records for automatic musical machines. No
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Speaker 1: doubt of the pianotist and pianola kind and He spent
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Speaker 1: all the leisure he could gain in going to and
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Speaker 1: fro in the earth, lecturing on the need of a
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Speaker 1: return to nature and on simple foods and simple ways.
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Speaker 1: He did it for the love of it. It was
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Speaker 1: very clear to us he had an inordinate impulse to
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Speaker 1: lecture and esteemed us fair game. He had been lecturing
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Speaker 1: on these topics in Italy, and he was now going
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Speaker 1: back through the mountains to lecture in Saxony, lecturing on
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Speaker 1: the way to perforate a lot more records lecturing the while,
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Speaker 1: and so start out lecturing again. He was undisguisedly glad
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Speaker 1: to have us to lecture to. By the way he
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Speaker 1: called our attention to his costume at an early stage.
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Speaker 1: It was the embodiment of his ideal of nature clothing,
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Speaker 1: and it had been made especially for him at very
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Speaker 1: great cost, simply because naturalness has fled the earth and
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Speaker 1: has to be sought now and washed out from your
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Speaker 1: crushed complexities like gold. I should have thought, said I,
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Speaker 1: that any clothing whatever was something of a slide upon
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Speaker 1: the natural man. Not at all, said he, Not at all.
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Speaker 1: You forget his natural vanity. He was particularly severe on
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Speaker 1: our artificial hoofs as he called our boots and our
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Speaker 1: hats or hair destructors. Man is the real king of beasts,
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Speaker 1: and should wear a mane. The lion only wears it
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Speaker 1: by consent and in captivity. He tossed his head. Subsequently,
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Speaker 1: while we lunched, and he waited for the specific natural
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Speaker 1: dishes he ordered. They taxed the culinary resources of the
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Speaker 1: inn to the utmost. He broached a comprehensive generalization. The
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Speaker 1: animal kingdom and the vegetable kingdom are easily distinguished, and
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Speaker 1: for the life of me, I see no reason for
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Speaker 1: confusing them. It is I hold a sin against nature.
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Speaker 1: I keep them distinct in my mind, and I keep
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Speaker 1: them distinct in my person. No animal substance inside, no
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Speaker 1: vegetable without what could be simpler or more logical. Nothing
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Speaker 1: upon me but leather and all wool garments within, cereals, fruits, nuts, herbs,
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Speaker 1: and the like. Classification order man's function. He is here
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Speaker 1: to observe and accentuate nature's simplicity. These people, he swept
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Speaker 1: an arm that tried not too personally to include us,
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Speaker 1: are filled and covered with confusion. He ate great quantities
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Speaker 1: of grapes and finished with a cigarette. He demanded and
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Speaker 1: drank a great horn of unfermented grape juice, and it
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Speaker 1: seemed to suit him well. We three sat about the board.
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Speaker 1: It was an agreeable little arbor on a hill hard
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Speaker 1: by the place where Wassen stands on earth, and it
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Speaker 1: looked down the valley to the uri rothstock. And ever
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Speaker 1: and again we sought to turn his undeniable gift of
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Speaker 1: exposition to the elucidation of our own difficulties, but we
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Speaker 1: seemed to get little. His style was so elusive. Afterwards,
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Speaker 1: indeed we found much information, and many persuasions had soaked
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Speaker 1: into us, But at the time it seemed to us
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Speaker 1: he told us nothing. He indicated things by dots and
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Speaker 1: dashes instead of by good heart assertive lines. He would
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Speaker 1: not pause to see how little we knew. Sometimes his
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Speaker 1: wit rose so high that he would lose sight of
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Speaker 1: it himself, and then he would pause, purse his lips
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Speaker 1: as if he whistled, and then till the bird came
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Speaker 1: back to the lore, fill his void mouth with grapes.
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Speaker 1: He talked of the relations of the sexes and love,
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Speaker 1: a passion he held in great contempt as being in
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Speaker 1: its essence complex and disingenuous. And afterwards we found we
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Speaker 1: had learnt much of what the marriage laws of Utopia
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Speaker 1: allow and forbid a simple natural freedom, he said, waving
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Speaker 1: a grape and an illustrative manner. And so he gathered
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Speaker 1: the modern Utopia did not at any rate go to that.
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Speaker 1: He spoke too, of the regulation of unions of people
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Speaker 1: who were not allowed to have children, of copple Cad
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Speaker 1: rules and interventions. Man, he said, had ceased to be
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Speaker 1: a natural product. We tried to check him with questions
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Speaker 1: at this most illuminating point, but he drove on like
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Speaker 1: a torrent and carried his topic out of sight. The world,
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Speaker 1: he held, was overmanaged, and that was the root of
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Speaker 1: all evil. He talked of the overmanagement of the world,
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Speaker 1: and among other things, of the laws that would not
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Speaker 1: let a poor, simple idiot, unnatural go at large. And
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Speaker 1: so we had our first glimpse of what utopia did
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Speaker 1: with the feeble and insane. We make all these distinctions
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Speaker 1: between man and man. We exalt this and favor that,
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Speaker 1: and degrade and seclude that. We make birth artificial, life artificial,
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Speaker 1: death artificial. You say, we said I with the first
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Speaker 1: glimmering of a new idea, But you don't participate, not
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Speaker 1: I I'm not one of your samurai, your voluntary noblemen
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Speaker 1: who have taken the world in hand. I might be,
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Speaker 1: of course, but I'm not samurai, I repeated, voluntary noblemen,
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Speaker 1: and for the moment could not frame a question. He
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Speaker 1: whirled on to an attack on science that stirred the
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Speaker 1: botanist to controversy. He denounced with great bitterness all specialists whatever,
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Speaker 1: and particularly doctors and engineers, voluntary noblemen, he said, voluntary gods.
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Speaker 1: I fancy they think themselves. And I was left behind
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Speaker 1: for a space in the perplexed examination of this parenthesis,
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Speaker 1: while he and the botanist, who is sedulous to keep
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Speaker 1: his digestion up to date with all the newest devices,
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Speaker 1: argued about the good of medicine men. The natural human constitution,
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Speaker 1: said the blond haired man, is perfectly simple, with one
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Speaker 1: simple condition. You must leave it to nature. But if
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Speaker 1: you mix things up so distinctly and essentially separated as
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Speaker 1: the animal and vegetable kingdoms, for example, and ram that
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Speaker 1: in for it to digest, what can you expect ill health?
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Speaker 1: There isn't such a thing in the course of nature.
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Speaker 1: But you shelter from nature and houses you protect yourselves
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Speaker 1: by clothes that are useful instead of being ornamental. You
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Speaker 1: bush with such abstursive chemicals as soap, for example. And
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Speaker 1: above all you consult doctors, he approved himself with a chuckle.
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Speaker 1: Have you ever found any one seriously ill without doctors
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Speaker 1: in medicine? About? Never? You say a lot of people
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Speaker 1: would die without shelter and medical attendants, no doubt. But
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Speaker 1: a natural death, a natural death, is better than an
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Speaker 1: artificial life. Surely, that's to be frank with you. The
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Speaker 1: very citadel of my position that led him, and rather
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Speaker 1: promptly before the botanist could rally to reply to a
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Speaker 1: great tirade against the laws that forbade sleeping out, he
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Speaker 1: denounced them with great vigor, and alleged that for his
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Speaker 1: own part he broke the law whenever he could found
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Speaker 1: some corner of moss shaded from an excess of dew,
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Speaker 1: and there sat up to sleep. He slept, he said,
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Speaker 1: always in a sitting position, with his head on his
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Speaker 1: wrists and his wrists on his knees, the simple natural
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Speaker 1: position for sleep and man. He said, it would be
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Speaker 1: far better if all the world slept out, and all
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Speaker 1: the houses were pulled down. You will understand, perhaps the
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Speaker 1: subdued irritation I felt as I sat and listened to
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Speaker 1: the botanist entangling himself in the logical net of this
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Speaker 1: wild nonsense, it impressed me as being irrelevant. When one
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Speaker 1: comes to a utopia, one expects a cicerone. One expects
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Speaker 1: a person as precise and insistent and instructive as an
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Speaker 1: American an advertisement, the advertisement of one of those land agents,
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Speaker 1: for example, who print their own engaging photographs to instill
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Speaker 1: confidence and begin you want to buy real estate. One
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Speaker 1: expects to find all utopians absolutely convinced of the perfection
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Speaker 1: of their utopia and incapable of receiving a hint against
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Speaker 1: its order. And here was this purveyor of absurdities. And yet,
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Speaker 1: now that I come to think it over, is not
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Speaker 1: this too, one of the necessary differences between a modern
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Speaker 1: utopia and those finite, compact settlements of the older school
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Speaker 1: of dreamers. It is not to be unanimous world any more.
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Speaker 1: It is to have all and more of the mental
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Speaker 1: contrarity we find in the world of the real. It
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Speaker 1: is no longer to be perfectly explicable. It is just
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Speaker 1: our own vast, mysterious welter, with some of the blackest
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Speaker 1: shadows gone with a clearer illumination and a more conscious
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Speaker 1: and intelligent will. Irrelevance is not irrelevant to such a scheme,
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Speaker 1: and our blonde haired friend is exactly just where he
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Speaker 1: ought to be here still Section three, I cease to
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Speaker 1: listen to the argumentation of my botanist. With this apostle
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Speaker 1: of nature. The botanist, in his scientific way, was, I believe,
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Speaker 1: defending the learned professions. He thinks and argues like drawing
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Speaker 1: on squared paper. It struck me as transiently remarkable that
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Speaker 1: a man who could not be induced to forget himself
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Speaker 1: and his personal troubles on coming into a whole new world,
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Speaker 1: who could waste our first evening in Utopia upon a paltry,
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Speaker 1: egotistical love story, should presently become quite heated and impersonal
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Speaker 1: in the discussion of scientific professionalism. He was absorbed. I
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Speaker 1: can't attempt to explain these vivid spots and blind spots
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Speaker 1: in the imaginations of sane men. There they are, you say,
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Speaker 1: said the botanist, with a prevalent index finger and the
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Speaker 1: resolute deliberation of a big siege gone being lugged into
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Speaker 1: action over rough ground by number of inexperienced men. You
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Speaker 1: prefer a natural death to an artificial life, But what
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Speaker 1: is your definition? Stress of artificial? And after lunch too
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Speaker 1: I ceased to listen, flicked the end of my cigarette
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Speaker 1: ash over the green trellis of the arbor, stretch my
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Speaker 1: legs with a fine restfulness, leant back, and gave my
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Speaker 1: mind to the fields and houses that lay adown the valley.
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Speaker 1: What I saw interwove with fragmentary things our garrulous friend
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Speaker 1: had said, and with the trend of my own speculations.
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Speaker 1: The high road, with its tramways and its avenues on
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Speaker 1: either side, ran in a bold curve, and with one
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Speaker 1: great loop of descent down the opposite side of the
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Speaker 1: valley and below crossed again on a beautiful viaduct, and
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Speaker 1: dipped in to an arcade in the side of the
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Speaker 1: Bristol stock our ends stood out boldly high above the level.
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Speaker 1: This took the houses, clustered in their collegiate groups over
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Speaker 1: by the high road and near the subordinate way that
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Speaker 1: ran almost vertically below us and passed us and up
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Speaker 1: towards the valley of the Mayan Rus. There were one
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Speaker 1: or two utopians cutting and packing the flowery mountain grass,
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Speaker 1: and the carefully leveled and irrigated meadows by means of
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Speaker 1: swift light machines that ran on things like feet and
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Speaker 1: seemed to devour the herbage. And there were many children
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Speaker 1: and a woman or so going to and fro among
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Speaker 1: the houses near At hand, I guessed a central building
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Speaker 1: towards the high road must be the school from which
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Speaker 1: these children were coming. I noted the health and cleanliness
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Speaker 1: of these young heirs of Utopia as they passed below.
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Speaker 1: The pervading quality of the whole scene was a sane order,
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Speaker 1: the deliberate solution of problems, a progressive intention, steadily achieving itself.
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Speaker 1: And the aspect that particularly occupied me was the incongruity
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Speaker 1: of this with our blonde hair friend. On the one hand,
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Speaker 1: here was a state of affairs that implied a power
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Speaker 1: of will, an organizing and controlling force, the co operation
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Speaker 1: of a great number of vigorous people to establish and
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Speaker 1: sustain its progress. And on the other, this creature of
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Speaker 1: pose and vanity, with his restless wit, his perpetual giggle
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Speaker 1: at his own cleverness, his manifest incapacity for comprehensive co operation.
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Speaker 1: Now had I come upon a hopeless incompatibility. Was this
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Speaker 1: the reductio ad absurdum of my vision? And must it?
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Speaker 1: Even as I sat there fade, dissolve and vanish before
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Speaker 1: my eyes, There was no denying our blond friend. If
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Speaker 1: this utopia is indeed to parallel our earth, man for man,
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Speaker 1: and I see no other reasonable choice to that, there
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Speaker 1: must be this sort of person and kindred sorts of
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Speaker 1: persons in great abundance. The desire and gift to see
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Speaker 1: life whole is not the lot of the great majority
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Speaker 1: of men. The service of truth is the privilege of
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Speaker 1: the elect. And these clever fools who choke the avenues
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Speaker 1: of the world of thought, who stick at no inconsistency,
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Speaker 1: who oppose, obstruct, confuse, will find only the freer scope
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Speaker 1: amidst utopian freedoms. They argued on these two as I
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Speaker 1: worried my brains with riddles. It was like a fight
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Speaker 1: between a cock sparrow and a tortoise. They both went
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Speaker 1: on in their own way, regardless of each other's proceedings.
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Speaker 1: The encounter had an air of being extremely lively, and
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Speaker 1: the moments of contact were few. But you mistake my point.
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Speaker 1: The blond man was saying, disordering his hair, which had
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Speaker 1: become unruffled in the preoccupation of dispute with a hasty
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Speaker 1: movement of his hand. You don't appreciate the position I
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Speaker 1: take up, Hugh said, I privately and lighted another cigarette
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Speaker 1: and went away into my own thoughts. With that, the
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Speaker 1: position he takes up, that's the way of your intellectual
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Speaker 1: fool the universe over. He takes up a position, and
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Speaker 1: he's going to be the most brilliant, delightful, engaging and
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Speaker 1: invincible of gay, delicious creatures defending them position you can
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Speaker 1: possibly imagine. And even when the case is not so
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Speaker 1: bad as that, there still remains the quality. We take
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Speaker 1: up our positions, silly little contentious creatures that we are.
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Speaker 1: We will not see the right in one another. We
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Speaker 1: will not patiently state and restate and honestly accommodate and plan,
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Speaker 1: And so we remain at sixes and sevens. We've all
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Speaker 1: got a touch of gladstone in us, and try to
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Speaker 1: the last moment to deny we have made a turn,
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Speaker 1: and so our poor broken springed world jolts thwart its
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Speaker 1: trackless destiny. Try to win into line with some fellow weakling,
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Speaker 1: and see the little host of suspicions aggressions, misrepresentations. Your
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Speaker 1: approach will stir like summer flies on a high road.
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Speaker 1: The way he will try to score a point and
19:43
Speaker 1: claim you as a convert to what he has always
19:45
Speaker 1: said is fear lest the point should be scored to you.
19:50
Speaker 1: It is not only such gross and palpable cases as
19:53
Speaker 1: our blond and tenoring friend, I could find the thing
19:56
Speaker 1: negligible word only that. But when one sees the same threat,
20:00
Speaker 1: we ad woven into men who are leaders, men who
20:02
Speaker 1: sway vast multitudes, who are indeed great and powerful men.
20:07
Speaker 1: When one sees how unfair they can be, how unteachable
20:10
Speaker 1: the great blind areas in their eyes, also their want
20:13
Speaker 1: of generosity, then one's doubts gather like mysts across this
20:17
Speaker 1: utopian valley. Its vista is pale, its people become unsubstantial phantoms.
20:23
Speaker 1: All its order and its happiness dim and recede. If
20:27
Speaker 1: we are to have any utopia at all, we must
20:30
Speaker 1: have a clear common purpose and a great and steadfast
20:33
Speaker 1: movement of will to override all these incurably egotistical dissentients.
20:38
Speaker 1: Something is needed wide and deep enough to float the
20:41
Speaker 1: worst of egotisms away. The world is not to be
20:44
Speaker 1: made right by acclamation in a day, and then for
20:47
Speaker 1: evermore trusted to run alone. It is manifest this utopia
20:51
Speaker 1: could not come about by chance an anarchy, but by
20:54
Speaker 1: co ordinated effort and a community of design. And to
20:57
Speaker 1: tell of just land laws and wise government, a wisely
21:00
Speaker 1: balanced economic system, and wise social arrangements, without telling how
21:04
Speaker 1: it was brought about, and how it is sustained, against
21:07
Speaker 1: the vanity and self indulgence, the moody fluctuations and uncertain imaginations,
21:12
Speaker 1: the heat and aptitude for partisanship that lurk even when
21:15
Speaker 1: they do not flourish in the texture of every man alive.
21:19
Speaker 1: Is to build a palace without either door or staircase.
21:23
Speaker 1: I had not this in mind when I began somewhere
21:27
Speaker 1: in the modern utopia. There must be adequate men, men
21:31
Speaker 1: the very antithesis of our friend, capable of self devotion,
21:34
Speaker 1: of intentional courage, of honest thought, and steady endeavor. There
21:39
Speaker 1: must be a literature to embody their common idea, of
21:42
Speaker 1: which this modern utopia is merely the material form. There
21:45
Speaker 1: must be some organization, however slight, to keep them in
21:48
Speaker 1: touch one with the other. Who will these men be?
21:52
Speaker 1: Will they be a caste, a race, an organization in
21:56
Speaker 1: the nature of a church, and there came into my
21:59
Speaker 1: mind the words of our acquaintance that he was not
22:01
Speaker 1: one of these voluntary noblemen. At first that phrase struck
22:06
Speaker 1: me as being merely queer, and then I began to
22:09
Speaker 1: realize certain possibilities that were wrapped up in it. The
22:12
Speaker 1: animus of our chance friend, at any rate, went to
22:15
Speaker 1: suggest that here was his antithesis. Evidently, what he is
22:19
Speaker 1: not will be the class to contain what is needed here.
22:23
Speaker 1: Evidently section four. I was recalled from my meditations by
22:29
Speaker 1: the hand of the blonde haired man. Upon my arm
22:32
Speaker 1: I looked up to discover the botanist had gone into
22:34
Speaker 1: the inn. The blondhaired man was, for a moment almost
22:38
Speaker 1: stripped of pose. I say, He said, weren't you listening
22:42
Speaker 1: to me? No, I said, bluntly. His surprise was manifest,
22:47
Speaker 1: but by an effort he recalled what he had meant
22:49
Speaker 1: to say. Your friend, he said, it's been telling me,
22:53
Speaker 1: in spite of my sustained interruptions, a most incredible story.
22:58
Speaker 1: I wondered how the botanist managed to get it in
23:01
Speaker 1: about that woman, I said, about a man and a
23:04
Speaker 1: woman who hate each other, and can't get away from
23:06
Speaker 1: each other. I know, I said, it sounds absurd, it is.
23:13
Speaker 1: Why can't they get away? What is there to keep
23:15
Speaker 1: them together? It's ridiculous, I quite He would tell it
23:20
Speaker 1: to me. It's his way, he interrupted me. And there's
23:24
Speaker 1: no point in it. Is he? He hesitated? Mad? There's
23:29
Speaker 1: a whole world of people mad with him? I answered,
23:32
Speaker 1: After a pause. The perplexed expression of the blond haired
23:36
Speaker 1: man intensified. It is vain to deny that. He enlarged
23:39
Speaker 1: the scope of his inquiry visibly, if not verbally. Dear me,
23:44
Speaker 1: he said, and took up something he had nearly forgotten,
23:47
Speaker 1: And you found yourselves suddenly on a mountain side. I
23:50
Speaker 1: thought you were joking. I turned round upon him, with
23:54
Speaker 1: a sudden access of earnestness. At least I meant my
23:57
Speaker 1: manner to be earnest. But to him it may have
23:59
Speaker 1: seemed wild. You, I said, are an original sort of man.
24:05
Speaker 1: Do not be alarmed. Perhaps you will understand we were
24:09
Speaker 1: not joking. But my dear fellow, I mean it. We
24:14
Speaker 1: come from an inferior world like this, but out of order.
24:19
Speaker 1: No world could be more out of order. You play
24:21
Speaker 1: at that and have your fun, but there's no limit
24:23
Speaker 1: to the extent to which a world of men may
24:25
Speaker 1: get out of gear. And our world, he nodded, but
24:29
Speaker 1: his eye had ceased to be friendly. Men die of starvation,
24:33
Speaker 1: People die by the hundred thousand, needlessly and painfully. Men
24:36
Speaker 1: and women are lashed together to make hell for each other.
24:39
Speaker 1: Children are born abominably and reared in cruelty and folly.
24:43
Speaker 1: There is a thing called war, a horror of blood
24:46
Speaker 1: and vileness. The whole thing seems to me at times,
24:49
Speaker 1: a cruel and wasteful wilderness of muddle. You, in this
24:52
Speaker 1: decent world have no means of understanding, No, he said,
24:56
Speaker 1: and would have begun, but I went on too quickly. No,
24:59
Speaker 1: when I I see you dandering through this excellent and
25:02
Speaker 1: hopeful world, objecting, obstructing, and breaking the law, displaying your
25:06
Speaker 1: wit on science and order, on the men who toil
25:09
Speaker 1: so ingloriously to swell and use the knowledge that is salvation,
25:12
Speaker 1: this salvation for which our poor world cries to heaven.
25:16
Speaker 1: You don't mean, to say, he said, that you really
25:18
Speaker 1: come from some other world where things are different and worse.
25:22
Speaker 1: I do, And you want to talk to me about
25:24
Speaker 1: it instead of listening to me. Yes, Oh nonsense, he
25:28
Speaker 1: said abruptly. You can't do it. Really, I can assure you.
25:32
Speaker 1: This present world touches the nadier of imbecility. You and
25:35
Speaker 1: your friend, with his love for the lady who's so
25:37
Speaker 1: mysteriously tied you're romancing people could not possibly do such things. It's,
25:42
Speaker 1: if you'll excuse me, ridiculous, he began. He would begin
25:47
Speaker 1: a most tiresome story, simply bore me down. We'd been
25:51
Speaker 1: talking very agreeably before that, or rather I had, about
25:55
Speaker 1: the absurdity of marriage laws, the interference with a free
25:58
Speaker 1: and natural life, and so on, and suddenly he bursts
26:01
Speaker 1: like a dam no, he paused, it's really impossible. You
26:05
Speaker 1: behave perfectly well for a time, and then you begin
26:07
Speaker 1: to interrupt in such a childish story too. He spun
26:12
Speaker 1: round upon his chair, got up, glanced at me over
26:15
Speaker 1: his shoulder, and walked out of the arbor. He stepped
26:18
Speaker 1: aside hastily to avoid too close an approach to the
26:20
Speaker 1: returning botanist. Impossible, I heard him say. He was evidently
26:26
Speaker 1: deeply aggrieved by us. I saw him presently a little
26:29
Speaker 1: way off in the garden, talking to the landlord of
26:31
Speaker 1: our inn, and looking towards us. As he talked, they
26:34
Speaker 1: both looked towards us, and after that, without the ceremony
26:38
Speaker 1: of a farewell, he disappeared, and we saw him no more.
26:42
Speaker 1: We waited for him a little while, and then I
26:44
Speaker 1: expounded the situation into the botanist. We are going to
26:48
Speaker 1: have a very considerable amount of trouble explaining ourselves. I
26:51
Speaker 1: said in conclusion, we are here by an act of
26:54
Speaker 1: the imagination, and that it's just one of those metaphysical
26:57
Speaker 1: operations that are so difficult to make credible. We are,
27:00
Speaker 1: by the standard of bearing and clothing, I remark about us,
27:03
Speaker 1: unattractive in dress and deportment. We have nothing to produce
27:06
Speaker 1: to explain our presence here, no bit of a flying machine,
27:09
Speaker 1: or a space traveling sphere, or any of the apparatus
27:12
Speaker 1: customary on these occasions. We have no means beyond a
27:15
Speaker 1: dwindling amount of small change out of a gold coin,
27:18
Speaker 1: upon which I suppose in ethics and the law, some
27:20
Speaker 1: native utopian had a better claim. We may already have
27:23
Speaker 1: got ourselves into trouble with the authorities. With that confounded
27:26
Speaker 1: number of yours. You did one too, All the more bothered, perhaps,
27:31
Speaker 1: when the thing is brought home to us. There's no
27:33
Speaker 1: need for recriminations. The thing of moment is that we
27:36
Speaker 1: find ourselves in the position not to put too fine
27:39
Speaker 1: a point upon it of tramps in this admirable world.
27:42
Speaker 1: The question of all others of importance to us at
27:45
Speaker 1: present is what do they do with their tramps? Because
27:48
Speaker 1: sooner or later, and the balance of probabilities seems to
27:51
Speaker 1: incline to sooner, whatever they do with their tramps, that
27:54
Speaker 1: they will do with us unless we can get some work.
27:58
Speaker 1: Exactly unless we can get some work, get work. The
28:02
Speaker 1: botanist leant forward on his arms and looked out of
28:04
Speaker 1: the arbor with an expression of despondent discovery. I say,
28:08
Speaker 1: he remarked, this is a strange world, quite strange and new.
28:13
Speaker 1: I'm only beginning to realize just what it means for us.
28:16
Speaker 1: The mountains there are the same, the old Bristol stock
28:19
Speaker 1: and all the rest of it. But these houses, you know,
28:22
Speaker 1: and that roadway, and the costumes, and that machine that
28:25
Speaker 1: is licking up the grass there Only he sought expression.
28:30
Speaker 1: Who knows what will come inside round the bend of
28:32
Speaker 1: the valley there? Who knows what may happen to us anywhere?
28:35
Speaker 1: We don't know who rules over us, even we don't
28:38
Speaker 1: know that. No I echoed, we don't know that. End
28:45
Speaker 1: of Chapter four Recording by Elena Cocoa, Florida,